Félicité

+ very realistic view on Kinshasa today. I've been there a year ago and this film took me right back to the bumpy, colorful streets. the human part of the film was very real and touching. one feels like being there with them.

+ very good music. especially the Congolese songs!

• pity of the blue, arty images woven throughout the main story. for me they don't add any value, on the contrary, they make the movie 30min too long.

= overall: very good acting, real and interesting view on black Africa: it shows that third world societies are just as valuable as the ones in the western world. they look different and maybe scary to some, but we should learn from there way of life, instead of imposing our view on them.

we have what they lack (good healthcare, good infrastructure, etc) but they have what we lack: social cohesion, time and most of all: freedom!

Set in Kinshasa, DR of the Congo, where a woman sings in a bar to support herself and her son. What is noteworthy is what seems to be the authentic poverty of the area and how people cope with it. Also noteworthy is the anger from having to fight for the basics of life that hopeless poverty engenders. Also noteworthy was how sexually manipulated females (to various degrees not uncommon throughout the world) continually are as they struggle to exist.

Hats off to the touchingly lively performance here from Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu in the title role. She makes her living singing in a Kinshasa bar and life's fine until her teenage son finds himself in need of medical attention after a motor cycle accident. As you can imagine, that's all expensive stuff and suddenly her life is thrown into turmoil as she has to reprioritise quickly. She's a strong and confident woman, but when she encounters "Tabu" (Papa Mpaka) her whole raison d'être is challenged and she begins to realise that perhaps what she had before was but a shell of what she could have now - if only she can save her son! There are two strong and characterful performances holding this together and that, coupled with some busy and intense photography, really does imbue us with a sense of the vibrancy of her life, but also of it's frailty. For all her strengths, she is most vulnerable where any parent might be - when it comes to her child. The dynamic between the two doesn't play out quite as you might expect, and with the addition of plenty of local music and dance to deliver extra authenticity to this story, it comes across as a perfectly plausible tale of a mother's love. At times, "Félicité" has an affecting documentary look to it as auteur Alain Gomis takes his time to let the actors establish and build their personas in an engaging and watchable fashion.

A woman, singing in a bar. Her son having a moto accident, being serious wonded. Her effort, hard , impressive to have money for the cure of boy. A great portrait of a side of Congo realities. Impressive for cinematography - admirable close ups - and, especially, for the performance of Vero Tshanda. Beya Mputu. Violence, pain, manipulation, selfishness, cruelty, all precise reflected . A minimalistic story of survive and force of women . And high significance of self sacrifice.

I have seen African Movies before, far better than this one , f.i. Timboktoe, . There are great singers in Congo, too bad . I had expected much more of the movie. Also the story was boring, there could be much more. It gives a good sight on Congo today the big cities, with people hungry for money (the woman at the hospital taking the medicine) ...